Excellent advice, Stephanie. Thanks!

Regarding the interior, self-published authors with short books who want to offer print-on-demand versions often use really large type to get enough pages for a spine. Nothing shouts “amateur” like tricks like this that are outside the norm.

Sandy

IMO the professionalism of the interior design is also important. Often self-published books (and some by small presses) use small fonts to squeeze a lot of words onto the page–understandable, given that paper is a big part of costs–but it affects the overall impression. Page layout can also be kind of slapdash. Depending on your topic, this may also make a difference.

Stuart, what matters is that you learned from the experience. And you did. Not everybody can say that.

Thanks for sharing that — I appreciate it.

Sandy

So smart, Sally! Do you send pics of the covers to your designer for inspiration?

Sandy

To get ideas on covers I go to bookstores and pull them down, contrast and compare.

I also take notes of publishers, editors,agents and such found in front or back matter.

I consider these leads current or that they were current in the last two years.

Great post.

Sally

The post doesn’t say that it’s not possible for authors to design their own covers, only that it’s not ideal for an author to design the book cover if he/she doesn’t have experience in graphic design. I, too, have seen book covers by indie authors with crayon drawings as the base artwork (not in bookstores, only at author fairs), and yes, they look like books written by six-year-olds.

But some of us authors out there (agreed: not a majority by any means) have graphic experience. I have designed a few book covers, not only for my own two novels but also for books by friends. In those cases, I did collaborate, back and forth, with the author to generate an image that reflected the author’s concept of the book. You can see the cover art for my two novels on my website – https://www.brasscastlearts.com

For my second novel, when I submitted my cover art to my indie publisher, their design center sent me three options with different fonts, none of which had anything to do with the story. One was a font used for science fiction (which my story was not – no space aliens), another was a font used for murder mysteries and thrillers (which my story was not – only one industrial-accident death). If I remember correctly, the third one used a dark font that nearly obscured the (also dark) imagery. I insisted that they use the font I used (readily available in word-processing software). But this was the publisher’s art department (which perhaps I could classify as “generic”), not a department of book-cover design professionals.

In any case, an author has the prerogative to sketch out the elements of a book cover design for a book cover designer to use as guidelines toward the finished product, and to provide photographs that approximate the author’s vision.

JR, I think you’ve read into the messages here. Milan doesn’t say that designers know genres better than authors. But he IS suggesting that designers with experience creating covers for your genre will do a better job than those who don’t have that experience.

He doesn’t say that authors can’t design their own covers, either. He’s saying that it’s not recommended.

Sandy

I also don’t agree that it is not possible for an author to do their own covers. Most who do so are bad at it and it shows, but an author who puts in the work for a very steep learning curve can do their own covers. I prefer to pay a professional, but I know a few authors who do a good job on their covers. (It is just not something I suggest as a good idea)

I have zero energy, and none to spare from writing – and I know what I want.

I would like to propose that if you can’t get someone to do what you want with a reasonable amount of effort, DIY is both possible and learnable.

And as far from ‘conventional wisdom’ as it is, I don’t want a cover like everyone else’s cover only different. That may work for genre fiction, but not for mainstream fiction.

I also like the idea that the cover is part of the story FROM the author’s pov. No one is as deeply into the characters, etc., and a cover designer can’t get there – it would take far too much time, unpaid.

What might work for people like me is getting close to that final version ourselves, and then letting a pro take it to the final polished state – but it would require a professional to take a secondary role, and I’m not sure they would be amenable.

In the professional publishing world, authors have almost no input. It is one of the advantages of being indie, however badly that advantage is often used.

I would say that if you’re doing your own, you face a huge learning curve and you shouldn’t skimp on it. It will show if you do. And you need licenses for images and fonts – a good pro will know all that and do it for you; a bad pro will leave you a mess you don’t even know about.

IMNVHO